Amidst the flurry at Google’s Search event one announcement that rocked everyone was the release of Google Instant. This next step in search actively predicts what are you going to type and scan the web right in front of your eyes. If you haven yet to try it out, venture over to Google.com come and simply type “W” into the search bar, results will likely display weather in your area. Not what you’re looking for, add one more letter and Google with continue to play the “I know what you’re thinking game.”

But how much time is Google Instant really saving? They are predict that by anticipating your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search, notes the blog. Those numbers roughly account to 350 million hours of time saved per year. Whoa.

Now you can’t make a claim like that and expect someone not to dive into it. Over at Lifehacker, they put the new instant to the test – here’s the setup:

we restricted our typing speed 240 key presses per minute. That’s four key presses per second, or what comes out to somewhere around 50 words per minute—a moderate typing speed for the average person. Key presses mean any key, so invoking a shortcut counts. The winner was determined when Google was sure it found the correct result.

Results are as follows and some pretty impressive numbers:

Overall it saved 17 seconds over all ten searches combined. That’s only 1.7 seconds per search on average, but let’s say you perform 40 searches per day—that’s 24,820 seconds, 413.67 minutes, and nearly 7 hours per year